Where's the Compassion?
09/02/03
This week, Attorney General John Ashcroft
continues his 20-city tour to promote the Patriot Act and its proposed
sequel, the so-called Victory Act. Critics have assailed the Attorney
General for his shameless promotion of the far-reaching law and rightly
so. As a man who is prone to singing self-penned hymns, Ashcroft is
clearly guided by the fierce anger of Jehovah rather than the love
of Christ. His tenure so far has been marked by a particularly ham-fisted
approach that is fueled by the sort of righteous indignation found
in the Old Testament. Sure, he will punish the evil, but with the
wide nets he casts, how many marginal or even innocent are wrongly
punished? Nowhere is this principle better illustrated than in the
federal government’s war against medical marijuana.
On July 10 of this year, the Justice Dept. asked the U.S. Supreme
Court to reverse a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that prevents
the federal government from taking prescription licenses from doctors
who recommend marijuana to patients for medical reasons. On August
9, at an American Bar Association panel, the top federal trial lawyer
in three of five ongoing federal suits in California involving medical
marijuana, compared states that have passed such laws to Southern
states that defied civil rights laws in the 1950s. Only a few days
later, drug czar John Walters, in an appearance in Oregon—the
first stop on a nationwide tour that will touch down in the 25 largest
U.S. cities to promote state and local drug enforcement and abuse
prevention efforts—said that medical marijuana is simply a ploy
to legalize the drug. "What's really going on is that sick and
dying people are being used as a political prop to legalize marijuana,"
the director of National Drug Control Policy stated.
The Justice Department and fellow drug enforcement officials are driven
by marijuana’s general prohibition and informed by the age-old
“Reefer Madness”-like suppositions that have fueled the
war against marijuana since it was outlawed in 1937. “It’s
my belief that marijuana is not a medicine,” Richard Meyer,
the Drug Enforcement Agency’s spokesman, recently said. “Marijuana
is a schedule one substance. … And we have to protect the public
from all kinds of dangerous drugs.”
The U.S. government’s effort is further motivated by a federal
campaign since 9/11 to link the war on drugs, in particular the one
on marijuana, to the war on terrorism. One provision of Ashcroft’s
proposed Victory Act would reportedly treat drug possession as a "terrorist
offense" and treat drug dealers as "narcoterrorist kingpins."
While ten states have passed provisions that legalize medical marijuana
in some manner, the federal government has chosen to wage its war
in the original state to provide for the drug’s medicinal use.
Since September 2001, there have been over 20 arrests and raids in
California conducted by the federal government for the growing of
marijuana for medical purposes. In one of the more high profile incidents,
the DEA raided the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM),
a collective of 250 seriously ill patients based in Santa Cruz, CA,
and arrested its founders, Valerie and Michael Corral. During the
raid, DEA agents also carted off WAMM’s patient records and
seized the patients’ weekly medical marijuana allotment. After
witnessing agents cut down 167 marijuana plants grown by the WAMM
collective, patients blocked a country road, preventing U-Hauls full
with medical marijuana from passing. Only after negotiating the release
of the Corrals were the agents allowed to proceed.
The raid is currently the subject of a federal lawsuit filed by patients
and the City and County of Santa Cruz to enjoin federal agents from
making any further raids. They charge that the federal government
is violating their Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendment rights.
Plaintiffs include seven WAMM patients who maintain that they rely
upon medical marijuana to control seizures and severe pain, stimulate
appetite in AIDS wasting syndrome, and ease the nausea caused by cancer
treatments.
The last two reasons are often cited
when arguing the merits of medical marijuana. Former Reagan aide Lyn
Nofziger joined a campaign last summer to lift the federal ban on
medicinal marijuana. Reagan’s White House political director
became a supporter when his daughter was dying of cancer. He said
that marijuana was the only drug that helped alleviate her nausea
and the other side effects of chemotherapy. “It is not a cure,
but it made that part of her life more bearable,” Nofziger said.
“And that meant a great deal to her, and her parents.”
Constitutional issues aside (and there
are many involved here), the federal government’s crusade against
medicinal marijuana completely dismisses the human element involved. A
recent New York Times article on President Bush’s attempts to identify
himself as a “compassionate conservative” argues that this
approach will likely hurt Bush’s re-election campaign because so
many of his policies have seemingly lacked compassion. In the case of
medical marijuana, the President is missing a unique opportunity. Calling
off Ashcroft and his dogs would finally show voters where the compassion
has been.
